Bedford native, family celebrate holiday in Israel 
 
By RACHEL ELLNER, Telegraph Correspondent 
Published: Tuesday, Apr. 3, 2007 
ENLARGE PHOTO 
 
Courtesy photo 
Rabbi Susan Silverman, a Bedford native, and her family are living in Israel for two years and are currently celebrating Passover there. The family is, in back from left, Silverman, Aliza, husband Yosef Abramowitz, and in front from left, Zamir, Hallel, Ashira and Adar. 
This year’s Passover, which celebrates the Israelite exodus from Egypt, has a special meaning for Bedford native Rabbi Susan Silverman and her young family. They are living in Kibbutz Ketura, midway through a two-year stay in Israel. 
 
“We live in the south of Israel, a half-hour from the Egyptian border,� she says, “on the route that the Israelites took upon their exodus. That is very powerful for me.� She describes it as “an island of peace amidst a sea of conflict.� 
 
Kibbutz Ketura is home of the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies (www.arava.org). Silverman says that undergraduate and graduate students from Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and North America study and live together there, “working toward environmental solvency and peace.� 
 
The eight-day Passover holiday is best known for its ritual evening Seder meals. But it is also a holiday with significant dietary restrictions. Food, both processed and home-cooked, must be prepared using special utensils. Wheat is banned, except in carefully prepared matzo, a cracker-like flatbread that is not allowed to rise, or leaven. Matzo itself can be crumbled into other food, for instance, most famously matzo balls – mainly matzo meal and egg white – for soup. 
 
This year, Silverman, her husband, Yosef Abramowitz, and their five children, Aliza, 14, Hallel, 12, Adar, 8, Zamir, 5, and Ashira, 3 – two were adopted from Ethiopia – are sharing their Seder with two Sudanese refugees who have found asylum in Israel. She and Abramowitz authored “Jewish Family & Life: Traditions, Holidays and Values for Today’s Parents and Children� (Golden Books), and she is at work on a book exploring a theology of adoption. 
 
“My husband is active in the efforts to settle Sudanese refugees in Israel. They first sought refuge in Egypt, along with hundreds of other Sudanese, but were unsafe there. So they came to Israel,� Silverman says. The parallels of their journey with that of the exodus are “striking and sad and inspiring.� 
 
The two men live on a neighboring kibbutz, according to Silverman, where they have been welcomed, given homes and work. But they remain separated from their families and cannot be identified. 
 
“If they are discovered, their families, who are trapped in Sudan, will be harmed,� she says. 
 
It is a far cry from the first time she was in Israel, when she was in her 20s. 
 
“I thought it would be funny to go to Egypt – like a reverse exodus. A day or two after the Seder, I went with some friends for a few days. Now that I am older, and a lot more serious as a Jew, that doesn’t appeal to me as a Passover activity!� 
 
Her Passover is still unusual by American standards. 
 
“We are vegetarians, so without pasta we are at a loss,� Silverman says. 
 
But, she says, some dietary restrictions practiced by American Jews are unnecessary. 
 
“The important thing I have learned is to not buy anything labeled kosher for Passover that can be bought fresh,� she says. “Fresh beets and asparagus are intrinsically kosher for Passover, so why eat yucky canned stuff?� 
 
Also, most American Jews, who tend to follow the Ashkenazi traditions, do not realize that eating kitniot, or grains other than wheat and its close cousins, does not make the meal un-kosher. “Not eating them is custom, not law. . . . We eat corn, peanuts, chickpeas, and thus hummus and so forth.� 
 
The Middle East offers other culinary adventures, although Silverman says she has not added much to her diet. 
 
“Many American immigrants live on our kibbutz, and the food is not drastically different from what we ate in the states,� she says. “We still eat as much pizza as possible.� 
 
But, not during Passover, of course. 
 
“Over the week, we’ll eat a lot of eggplant and cheese,� she says. Also, Abramowitz “makes wonderful Iraqi charoset with a date base.� This sweet concoction is supposed to remind Seder participants of the mortar slaves in Egypt used with their bricks. Typical American recipes involve diced apple, honey and nuts. 
 
Some parts of the Passover Seder ritual are especially personal for Silverman. Before the meal, a piece of flat matzo is hidden for the young children to find as a game. It’s called the afikomen. 
 
“At this point in my life, I am most moved and intrigued by ‘hidden-ness’,� she says. “There is so much in the lives of my sons that is hidden, that I spend a lot of time these days thinking and writing about the theological implications of what is hidden from us. When I was asked to write on a part of the Seder for the ‘Women’s Seder Sourcebook’ (by Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, Jewish Lights Publishing), I chose the afikomen for that reason.� 
 
As a child, Silverman celebrated the Passover Seder at her grandparents’ house in Concord. 
 
“I loved it,� she said. “And it became important as an adult, when I began to learn more about being Jewish. I had deeply held values, but only as an adult did I realize that Judaism was the source of those values.� 
 
“I am all for engagement as learning method. Jewish learning is rarely frontal – one person talking and everyone else listening,� she says. 
 
“The whole of rabbinic work is active discussion, across generations and continents,� Rabbi Silverman says. “The blessing for studying Torah blesses God as the One who commands us to engage in Torah. Not learn it, or memorize it, but to integrate it into our thinking and actions and, in turn, to invest ourselves in its unfolding revelation.� 
 
Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws, “connects the mundane everyday need to eat with our community,� she says, “our values, and God. It places limits on ourselves that are unrelated to finances. The bottom line is not what we can afford, but our relationship with each other and with God. It is a constant reminder that life is not ours to exploit.� 
 
Also, the dictum “Let all who are hungry come and eat!� is extremely meaningful for Silverman. “My older daughters had an idea for a hunger program and harassed Yosef until he founded it!� 
 
The organization is called worldmanna.org. Manna is the food that God provided the Israelites in the desert when they left Egypt. It’s been funded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and both the U.N. and the World Food Summit have endorsed it. It has enlisted the involvement of Jewish, Christian and Muslim umbrella organizations. 
 
Silverman describes Passover as “a time to examine our own failures as a people in terms of the values of the holiday. Being kind to the stranger ‘for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’ is the most often repeated mitzvah (commandments) in the Torah. Are we doing that?� she says. 
 
“Where are we failing, and what needs to be done differently?� she asks. “I am very proud of many things in Israel in this regard. For example, gay and lesbian Palestinians flee to Israel for sanctuary, and there are organizations here with programs to help them. And great efforts are being made to settle refugees from Sudan, a country that has sworn the destruction of Israel.� 
 
But, she says, “there are many things that need overhaul, and have the attention of many Israeli activists and politicians, like equality in resources for Arab and Jewish communities. It is in those governmental decisions that we have to remember the biblical mandate that we recall most pronouncedly at Passover, and act accordingly.� 
 
There’s another lesson, as well, she says. Passover is about redemption; God’s redemption of the Jews from Egyptian bondage. “That grand, sweeping story must be brought to bear on real-life,� she says. 
 
“The Bible says that we must ‘Remember the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’ Who are the strangers we must remember?� Silverman asks, and then answers – it is the Socratic way – “The categories of ‘stranger’ in the Bible, people we today might call ‘at risk’ are foreigners, women and children.� 
 
Millennia later, says Silverman, these groups are still the most vulnerable all over the world. 
 
“Migrant workers, woman and children – In what balance do we want to bring the qualities of compassion, love, judgment and redemption in addressing such needs?� 
 
Passover is a story of action, she says, “which motivates us to respond to the injustices of our time.� 
 
Rachel Ellner can be reached at rellner@gmail.com 
 
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